


And They Were Roommates

by especiallythezefronposter



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: (it's never described very toroughly, (kind of), Breathplay, Cuddling & Snuggling, Friendship, Getting Together, Identity Porn, Identity Reveal, Living Together, M/M, Meet-Cute, Misunderstandings, Peter has a job, Polyamory Negotiations, Secret Identity, Sex, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Sex, also everything is either in italics or hyphenated i'm so sorry, but there's object insertion, probably other stuff as well), that's it that's the story, this is seriously just identity porn why am i tagging anything else, weird lube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:00:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28863693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/especiallythezefronposter/pseuds/especiallythezefronposter
Summary: Spider-Man and Deadpool become roommates. Peter Parker and Wade Wilson go on a date and hit it off. These two occurrences are completely unrelated, or at least that's what Spider-Man and Deadpool think.Or, how long can two reasonably intelligent adults date each other before they realise they're dating each other: the movie.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Comments: 18
Kudos: 399





	And They Were Roommates

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> I key mashed this into existence in the last five days while pretending c*vid, ex*ms and the w*rld don't exist, so feel free to do the same while you read this! I wish you as much distraction from shitty real-life stuff as you need! 
> 
> Leave me a kudo or comment if you feel like it and if you have any constructive criticism and some time to spare to tell me about it, i'd love to hear!

Peter is aware that normal people don’t enjoy hanging out on rooftops as much as he does. It was pathetic when he was seventeen and couldn’t figure out how to stay friends with anyone after the Spider-Man thing started and it’s even more pathetic now that he’s twenty-four and can’t figure out how to _make_ friends after he’s lost the few he did have. 

_Put yourself out there,_ they say, but it’s not like he has the time to take adult pottery classes or join a book club when his boss doesn’t believe sleep is necessary and thinks a two thousand dollar wage is enough to survive on in New York City. 

Even patrols feel like a guilty pleasure when he knows he could be spending that time at work, coming up with something that will impress Mr. Stark enough to give him a raise.

He’s not even patrolling at all right now, just sitting on the edge of a rooftop as he waits for the triple espresso he got five minutes ago to kick in. He starts to nod off instead, which is not a very responsible thing to do on a building ledge, but he likes watching the street from up here and moving two entire yards over to be away from the steep drop seems like entirely too much work.

He can recognise Deadpool’s footsteps as he comes up behind him. Normally he can hear him clamber up the fire escape first and has to ignore the excited thumping of his heart for the half a minute it takes Deadpool to get up, but he somehow missed those sounds today.

‘You awake, Spidey-pie?’, DP stage-whispers.

‘Yeah. I’m awake.’

‘You don’t look it. You look like you’re gonna make like me and nosedive off the building. Except not on purpose. And without kumbayaing yourself back together in the end.’

He sits beside Spider-Man and wraps an arm around him because Deadpool is the cuddliest assassin Peter knows. 

The nice thing about Deadpool is that Peter doesn’t even have to answer. If he just stays quiet, Deadpool is going to have a nice little monologue for Peter to listen to while he definitely doesn’t fall asleep against Deadpool’s shoulder.

‘It would be like one of those what’s red, blue and gooey all over jokes, you know. Except those are only funny if you’re red, blue, gooey and not dead. So you better just stay up here. You should sleep more. What’s got you looking like a tired zombie anyways?’

‘I’m not tired. Coffee just hasn’t kicked in yet.’

‘Didn’t deny the zombie part, eh? Always hoped we’d get more zombies in New York, but I’m pretty sure they keep ending up in other universes. I’m not sure what universe this one is, but anything that draws inspiration from the movies won’t have zombies, you know, ‘cause they don’t look good on a screen. And the FX is probably too much work, too, that’s my guess. Even in the comics they’ve been skimping out on us. They think doing one “everyone’s a zombie” series is enough to keep us sated, but there’s no reason they can’t sprinkle in a couple zombies in everyone’s regular series, don’t you think so, Spidey? Maybe it’s just me that’s all pro-zombie.’

‘Fighting zombies sounds exhausting,’ Peter mumbles.

Deadpool squeezes him a little closer, the way he does when he thinks Peter is being particularly adorable. ‘You’re just saying that because you’re tired. I bet you’d love killing zombies. Killing is always fun, but it’s extra fergalicious when you get to be all gross about it. No one ever bashes in people’s heads for fun anymore. It’s all clean gunshot wounds and katana slashes. Next zombie apocalypse, I’m bringing a morning star, you know, the one with the spikey ball. You ever hit anyone with a morning star, Spidey? It’s something else. You know, you must be really tired if you’re letting me talk about M-U-R-D-E-R for so long.’

Peter is pretty sure he mumbles something into DP’s shoulder and Deadpool laughs, so whatever his point was must have come across.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t be killing zombies at all, you know. I’d make a good zombie, and so would you, with your healing and stuff. You’d probably look all sweet and neat, no tears in your suit or anything. I always wonder what would happen if everyone just becomes a zombie and there aren’t any humans left to bite. Would we have jobs? Would I have a zombie wife and a zombie kid and a zombie briefcase that I would take to my zombie job? Would we go on zombie patrols? Do you think we’d be friends as zombies? Also, how did I get the kid? Do zombies have sex? Is that a thing? The Walking Dead ran for ten seasons and they never showed us any zombie sex, can you believe that, Spidey-Cakes?’

Peter doesn’t answer, even though he’s still not entirely asleep, just relaxed and dozing off, focused on Deadpool’s voice and nothing else. He can feel DP turn his head, press his masked forehead against the side of Peter’s head. He’s speaking softly now, close to Peter’s ear, just rambling about zombies and zombie sex and the zombie economy, which zombie!Deadpool will have to keep afloat in his little cubicle at his accounting job. Zombie!Spider-Man works three cubicles over at his own desolate desk job and together they join a swinger’s club where everything goes wrong once someone suggests cannibalism. After a while he’s just spouting nonsense, still stuck on the mechanics of zombie sex and Peter isn’t sure if this is still reality or if he just incorporated realistic Deadpool rambling into his dream.

By the time he wakes up, it’s still dark, but Deadpool has moved to lie on his back and has allowed Peter to sleep on top of him like some ridiculously overgrown cat.

Deadpool isn’t even weird about it, he just lets Peter get up off him and gets up himself, dusting off his suit.

‘What time is it?’

‘Around midnight, I’m pretty sure.’

‘You let me sleep for _two hours_?’ Fuck, fuck, fuck. Peter runs his hands over his masked head. He doesn’t have time to waste two hours on a nap. He already slept a few hours right after work. That should have been enough to last him ‘till tomorrow night.

‘You’re slow when you’re tired. I hate slow patrols. Gotta keep that blood pumpin’, that adrenalin flowin’. Callie from zombie soul-cycle would not be proud!’

‘It’s November!’

‘Losing a couple toes over this is worth it, Spidey, and there weren’t even any crimes in the last two hours, anyways, so it’s not like we missed anything!’

‘You didn’t hear a single police siren in two hours. In New York City.’

‘Exactly! Not a single one.’

‘I’m going home’, Peter sighs.

‘Wait! Did I mess this up? Was I supposed to let you fall of the building? I’ve botched a few suicide attempts in my day, I know it’s bad manners. Oh, oh, was I supposed to fondle you while you slept? Did I let your ass get cold? Spidey, I swear, if something bad happens to your funbuns because of me, I have a really special place inside myself reserved for both my katanas to go.’

‘No, it’s… I don’t have time for this, okay? I don’t have time to spend two hours doing nothing, when I should be working or patrolling or _anything else_.’

He shoots a web at a crane and slings out of there before DP can say anything else. He knows he’s being childish, but it’s not actually that fun to wake up knowing you’ve wasted two full hours doing absolutely nothing when you’re behind on absolutely _everything_. He changes in an alley and goes to the lab instead of going home, because Stark Industries’s R&D department is always open, and gets back to work.

-

Deadpool likes to party-crash Avengers missions. Spider-Man does not. It’s kind of adorable. Spider-Man is _somewhere in his early twenties_ , one of the only tidbits of personal information Spidey has ever given him, but when he’s around the Avengers, he does his best impression of the new kid in high school who bashfully pretends not to realise he’s pretty enough to sit at the popular kid’s table. He channels his inner Cadie Heron into every genuinely nice comment he answers with just an ‘Oh,’ and serves Bloom from Winx Club when he shows off his juicy butt and gives a disapproving eye-narrow every time someone tries to suggest he stop bringing Deadpool along. Spidey is the self-righteous redhead who is Better Than The Popular Kids and who does not want to join them even when they (Iron Man) offer him increasingly ridiculous perks (like an actual car).

Wade gets distracted imagining that Spidey is a sexy redhead underneath the mask and thinks back to the messed up shit the last redheaded twink who slept with him got up to when he found out how sensitive Wade’s scarred skin is to hot wax. It’s a good time, overall, fighting some conveniently easy to beat monster that has wrapped itself around the corner of a building with its tentacles while he listens to Spidey’s Disapproval Voice and imagines the things Spidey could do to him if he turned all that disapproval on DP in a bedroom or on an acceptably private rooftop. 

Wade gets kind of lost in it. There’s a lot for him to hack and slash, monster-wise, and somewhere in the background, Spidey-pants is still bickering with Iron Man and pretending he’s not getting as heated as he is.

To join the Avengers team, being a perfect, non-murderous Spider-Angel is required, so Spidey fits in like the spot was made just for him, but another thing everyone has agreed upon is that the rest of the team must know your identity. This is where Spidey’s head gets stuck in the metaphorical donkey’s ass (that’s how the saying goes, right?). 

Spidey doesn’t do real names. It’s non-negotiable. Wade, being a well-adjusted, socially-adept person, can respect this and so, around Spider-Man, Deadpool doesn’t do real names, either (literally everyone else knows his name and his face, but that’s okay, they don’t really matter anyways). He knows that he’s a piece of shit, but he’s automatically cooler than all of the perfect, clear-skinned Avengers for the simple reason that he has never tried to manipulate Spider-Man into giving him his real name and they all have. 

If he had a super exclusive Super Club with all of his coolest enhanced friends, he’d let Spider-Man in even if he wore a fake mustache, made his voice all gruff and claimed his name was Smithsonian Smith. He doesn’t get why the Avengers throw such a fuss over the true identity thing. Spider-Man already told them his blood type. What more can they want? Not even _Wade_ knows Spider-Man’s blood type.

Iron Man is launching into another rant about how he’ll have no one to call if Spidey gets hurt, how they won’t even be able to contact his day job. Spidey, for some reason, snaps at that exact point, about the day job, webs the monster of the day in the face so hard that Wade can practically see the cartoon stars and angels floating around its head and slings out of there. Deadpool follows, giggling. He loves it when his Spidey gets temperamental.

They end up on the Good Rooftop, the way they always do.

‘You’ve been a real feisty cat lately, Spidey,’ Wade says, and ducks to avoid the web Spider-Man half-heartedly shoots at his mouth.

‘Fuck you, too, DP.’

Deadpool raises his hands, trying to hide his Spidey-Cakes-used-a-nickname-on-little-old-me glee. ‘I’m not complaining, babe. It’s sexy. I feel like you could be pouring hot wax over me at any moment now.’

Spidey has many talents. One of them is conveying even the most detailed of facial expressions through a mask with two big white lenses and no other features. Right now he narrows his eyes into a wirthering look. Not I-regret-talking-to-Deadpool-and-will-never-do-it-again withering, just regular withering, which is a nice change. Everyone else only ever makes the former face around Deadpool.

‘What’s got your Underoos all twisted up this week?’, Deadpool asks, sitting down beside Spider-Man on the edge of the building. ‘You’ve been a glum sugarplum since Sunday.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Spider-Man says.

‘Is it a secret identity thing? Are you actually Hannah Montana and did you fumble your last live performance? Are you actually Mariah Carey and are you in a mood because next month everyone is going to pretend your best song is All I Want for Christmas is You when in fact your best song is _clearly_ Bye Bye?’

‘No, it’s not… It’s a problem a lot of people have, but it’s stupid. It’s not a big deal.’

‘How not big of a deal?’

‘They cut the power at my apartment. Not for… It’s gonna come back on soon, but it still kind of sucks.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because I didn’t pay the bill for three months.’

‘Why didn’t you pay the bill?’

‘Because it was really high and I’ve only been getting paid since this month and even if I spend my entire wage on it, it’s not enough to cover all the overdraft fees.’

‘You told me you got a job, like, last year. How are you only getting paid now?’

‘There isn’t a single job you can get at the company where I work without doing an unpaid internship first. And the other job I had was just a small thing to pay for food in college.’

‘You really should become a merc. No one has ever asked me to work for free before and if they did, I could probably just kill them.’

Spidey sighs, indulging Deadpool’s attempt to cheer him up. ‘I’d be the worst merc ever, not wanting to kill anyone and all that.’

‘You could be like a con-man. Everyone would think they’d be hiring the cutest merc this side of the Mississippi and really, my ugly mug would be hiding behind you and pulling the trigger.’

‘Bonnie and Spide,’ Spidey says, a smile in his voice. ‘You’d have to be Bonnie, though, for it to make sense.’

‘Of course I would be,’ Deadpool says. He puts his arm around Spider-Man, because his poor Spider-Baby must have been spending all of his time stressed about paying his bills. 

Wade wishes they were ancient Romans so that he could spend all of his time hand-feeding Spider-Man grapes (and killing people with swords), because Spider-Man deserves to lounge in the Mediterranean sun and eat grapes all day long, instead of having to worry about electricity bills (which didn’t even exist back in Ancient Rome, check and mate). Mercs did exist, so Wade could even pay for all of Spider-Man’s sexy togas and the chaise longue he’d need to lounge in during the grape-feeding. 

Or he could be a gladiator and Spider-Man could be a sexy emperor who watched Wade get torn to bits during every gladiator fight. They could have a steamy affair where emperor!Spider-Man seeks him out after the fights and gets all dirty with Wade’s blood while they fuck, digs his fingers into Wade’s wounds with a mean little glint in his lenses. He’s losing the point of his original train of thought, but he doesn’t mind because this one is so yummy.

Spider-Man leans against his shoulder the way he only does when he is feeling especially world-weary and Wade wonders what the appropriate moment is for a friendship to transition from manly side-hugs to pulling your friend into your lap and maybe grinding up a little (no homo).

‘I know why you can’t pay your bills,’ Wade says.

‘Because my boss is an asshole?’, his Spider-Darling asks.

‘That, too, but everyone’s boss is an asshole. It’s just that every other twenty-something in New York has five roommates and lives in a closet-sized room that only costs a thousand bucks. You probably live on your own in a room the size of _two closets_ for two thousand bucks like a sucker.’

‘You can’t really be roommates with anybody when you come home in the middle of the night with your arm twisted in the wrong direction in a very real-looking Spider-Man suit.

‘Unless your roommate comes home at the same time as you with one leg fully chopped off in an authentic Deadpool get-up.’

Spider-Man sits up like Wade startled him and Wade drops his arm from around Spidey’s shoulders because that seems like the polite thing to do.

‘Also, this entirely fictional roommate might already have a spare room, _with an en-suite_. It was furnished by a blind lady and looks it, too, but it would be very insensitive of you to comment on that. The only polite way to deal with the differently-abled is to ignore it when one of them puts all of her furniture around her bed like she’s trying to build a very unaccommodating furniture-fort.’

‘Shut up,’ Spider-Man says, not unkindly. ‘You’re not saying this.’

‘I’m not. It’s a fictional scenario. In which you could move in right now, if you want. Or you can come see the place first and then decide.’

‘Shut up,’ Spider-Man repeats. ‘Do you want me to sign my real name on the lease? Are you going to walk in whenever I’m changing to see me with my mask off?’

‘Does Iron Man do that, because I think he might be trying to see other stuff than just your face.’

Spider-Man gets up. He runs his hands over his masked head like he’s supposed to have long hair underneath. _Hmmmm._ In the legendary words of Paris Hilton, _that’s hot_. ‘I thought you didn’t care that I wanted to keep my identity a secret?’

Wade scrambles up, too, unable not to when his Spider-Heart sounds so distressed. ‘I don’t. I’m not trying to do anything, Spidey. You don’t have to even sign the lease and I wouldn’t go into your room, ever, unless you asked me to come in so that I could paint your nails and give you sex tips like I’m your Cool older sister who already has boobs and is dating Heath Ledger. I’m good at that. I even have nail polish that stays on gloves, so I could just paint the tips of your gloves if you don’t want to take them off. I’d keep my mask on, too. Don’t want you knowing how handsome I actually am, you know. You’d fall in love with me right away. And roommates falling in love is boring. That’s the clear lesson in all of that step-sibling porn I keep watching for some reason.’

‘We’d… We’d just keep our masks on all the time?’

‘Yeah. Why not, you know? My favourite comic book panels are always the ones where you’re dressed all mundane and then have the mask and the red shoes on.’

Spidey shakes his head. ‘I’ll just work more hours. I’m really close to the amount I need to pay for all of it.’

‘Pwease, Spidey-Boo. It’d be so fun. It’d be like this all the time, except it wouldn’t be freezing. You’ll have your own bathroom and everything, so I wouldn’t even walk in on you naked so that you’d have to walk in on me naked or anything.’

‘How much is rent?’

‘How much do you make in a month?’

‘Two thousand bucks.’

‘Perfect! The rent is two hundred.’

Spider-Man glares at him.

‘I’m serious,’ Wade says.

‘I don’t want a pity-room.’

‘Spidey,’ Wade says, as genuinely as he can. He even puts his hands on Spidey’s shoulders and everything, like a baseball coach giving a Very Important Pep Talk before the big game. ‘Do you know how much money people make in my line of work? Keeping me alive for a month costs about as much as a strip-club all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet costs. So all that other money I have is just sitting there, waiting for somebody I can spend it on. I could be your non-sexual sugar daddy. Imagine how _sexy_ that would be. I know people are weird about money, but I literally don’t care. It’s like,’ he raises his hand up high in the air, ‘Bea Arthur,’ he lowers his hand drastically, ‘my own physical integrity,’ he lowers his hand even further, ‘money.’

‘I do feel weird about money, though. How could we be friends if you’re bankrolling my entire existence?’

‘What if you look at it as money that’s not mine? I just have it, but it’s not supposed to be there. I got all of it for killing people, so it’s not like I actually deserve to have it, right?’

Spidey still doesn’t seem convinced.

‘Come on. This is like you making an OnlyFans except you won’t have to go through the effort of figuring out how to take self-timer photos. This is like if that Spider-Man GoFundMe we found wasn't a scam. If you ever told me who you are, I was going to figure out a way to anonymously beef up your bank account anyways. Might as well do it like this.’

Spider-Man shakes his head. Even with the mask on, he kind of looks like he’s freaking out. (Hopefully Wade at least managed to incept the idea of making an OnlyFans into his brain, if nothing else.)

‘It’s a sex thing,’ he tries. ‘Will it be less of a big deal to you if I get off on it? I know every leftist millennial dreams of having an mean old Republican like me to financially dominate.’

‘You’re not a Republican,’ Spidey says quietly.

‘Just this month,’ Wade pleads. ‘We’ll figure everything else out, but just tell your landlord to fuck off, pay me two hundred bucks and live in an apartment with working wi-fi and electricity for a month. We can figure out everything else from there.’

Spider-Man deflates and Deadpool kind of feels like he should catch him, prop him up, make him look all strong and mighty again. ‘Okay,’ he says, in the smallest of voices. ‘A month. That’s all I need.’

‘Sure, Spider-cakes. A month from now and you’ll have it all figured out, I know that.’

They go on patrol, Deadpool forcing Spider-Man to listen to all of Mariah Carey’s E=MC² until they can both sing along to every song. Spider-Man treats it like a duet, does all the ridiculous pop-diva background sounds while Deadpool does the main vocals. Deadpool has never been out-Mariah’d before, but Spider-Man gives it his all, even when he’s webbing up date-rapists in the meantime. They drop a heavily-drugged but fully-clothed and untouched lady at the ER and then they get to the point where they would normally part ways (Deadpool pleading for an ass-squeeze and letting Spider-Man negotiate it down to a forehead kiss, which Spider-Man then accepts with all the smugness of the high-maintenance pop-diva vers husband of Wade’s dreams). 

Spider-Man is kind of awkward now, like he expects Wade to tell him they can’t be roommates anymore. Wade does no such thing.

‘Apartment’s right down here,’ he says, as he leads them back to the Good Rooftop.

Spidey’s lenses are wide when he realises Wade lives right under their favourite meet up spot.

‘Your apartment is here?’, Spider-Man asks as Wade unlocks the rooftop entrance.

‘What? It’s convenient.’

‘I can’t believe this,’ Spider-Man says. ‘You’ve been this lazy all along?’

They go down one flight of stairs and Wade unlocks the door to his apartment. ‘That’s the part you’re shocked about?’

‘I’m shocked about every part,’ Spider-Man says when Wade shows him around the apartment (which means he just makes a circus-director like arm gesture and gives no explanation for the half deflated blow-up doll in the corner wearing a unicorn mask. The living room/kitchen is messy, but it’s big and the ceilings are tall, so he’s sure it’s still better than whatever freezing shithole his Spider-Babe lives in now.

‘You should still make an OnlyFans, you know,’ Wade says after he’s closed the door and offered Spider-Man every single beverage available from his fridge and pantry (including all six flavours of chocolate milk). ‘I’ll even take all of the pictures, so you won’t have to figure out the self-timer or anything. You’d make millions.’

Spidey rolls his eyes.

‘Sleep on it, eh. One forehead kiss and it’s off to bed with you.’

Spidey does that little forward head-tilt he only does when Wade is about to give him a forehead kiss and so Wade presses his mask-covered lips to Spidey’s mask-covered forehead. Then he leans in close to Spidey’s ear. ‘No homo,’ he whispers.

Spider-Man laughs so hard that it kind of reminds Wade of that time Reed Richards pulled Spidey’s wisdom teeth and got him high on a triple dose of laughing gas and fantastic-strength painkillers. Wade pulls him into a hug to calm him down.

‘Thanks, DP,’ Spidey mumbles into his shoulder. ‘For all of this.’

‘No biggie, Spider-Bug. You know, us fly, hot and sexy and beautiful people have got to look out for each other.’ He gives Spider-Man another very non-homo forehead kiss, ignoring how his stomach is swooping around the way it does when Spider-Man slings him around with him, and then ushers his Spider-Babe off to bed.

-

Turns out life really is easier when you don’t have to constantly worry about bills or dying of hypothermia while you sleep. Deadpool’s apartment is always toasty and he really meant it when he said he only wanted two hundred bucks for Peter’s contribution towards rent.

It’s a good month, one where Peter actually sleeps every single night, (sometimes for over six hours!) and where he has enough money to eat actual vegetables, even though DP makes fun of him for putting broccoli in his morning omelette because apparently he's _doing it wrong_.

DP is a good cook and insists on making Peter the most eclectic of meals every evening. They watch three entire seasons of Golden Girls somehow, even though Peter is still working ridiculous hours and they still go on patrol almost every night. Deadpool finds every excuse he can to stuff Peter full of cookies and pies and Peter stops resisting after approximately one bite of Deadpool’s Signature Cream Pie (which is so good that Peter can weather all of the creampie jokes DP inevitably makes).

Iron Man is still on his back about his secret identity and even though he’s gotten out of his old lease, he’s still looking for a new apartment, but even all of that seems less stressful with Deadpool there to give him backrubs and stuff him full of snickerdoodles.

Even the mask stuff isn’t really that weird. Deadpool stays fully covered at all times, even if that means he keeps on his oven mitts until he can exchange them for his regular gloves while Peter isn’t looking. Peter does the same, choosing to keep even his hands covered all the time. When they eat they do so turned away from one another the way they do when they eat on the roof. It’s easy now. They can just watch TV during dinner instead of looking at each other.

Everything is so simple all of a sudden, takes so much less energy and is so much more fun that he even finds the time to date, somehow. 

It’s not on purpose. He’s at Stark Industries when it happens. He’s in the elevator, carrying a bunch of beakers he just cleaned out up a few floors to the branch manager because for some reason people think he’s only good for _washing beakers_ after getting three MScs in four years. There’s a guy already in the elevator, buff and sexy and everything Peter would need to blow off some steam after how stressful the last few months have been. 

He only realises he’s been staring when the hot guys says, ‘If you’re staring at me in an ew-fuck-how-do-you-even-get-that-disgusting kind of way, I’d kindly ask you to fuck off, but if you’re staring in an I-wonder-if-he’s-bumpy-and-scarred-all-the-way-down kind of way, I’ll gladly push all of those beakers out of your hands and help you pick them up to get you into the meet-cute vibe.’

He’s an idiot. Who stares at a guy who’s got scars all over his face, his head, even his hands. You don’t stare at a guy like that, ever. That’s just rude. ‘It um, it was more of an I-hope-those-scars-don’t-hurt-and-that-you’re-gay-and-single-and-free-tonight kind of stare, if um, if that’s cool with you?’

The guy’s eyes are little wide, like he’d expected Peter get out on the nearest floor and run. ‘Would pan work?’ he asks.

Peter smiles. ‘I’m, um.’ He points at himself like an _absolute idiot_. ‘Bi,’ he finishes stupidly.

The guy nods slowly. He gets a business card out of his pocket and tucks it into the breast pocket of Peter’s lab coat. ‘The answer is yes, by the way,’ he says.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m bumpy _all_ the way down.’

Peter texts the guy during his ridiculously short lunch break. The business card just says Wade Wilson and a phone number. Everything else on it has been crossed out with sharpie like he recently changed jobs but didn’t get rid of the cards.

He feels kind of weird about all of it. He’s excited about going on a date, but whenever he tries to think of texting Deadpool to tell him Peter will be eating out tonight, he panics. He’d always kind of hoped that Deadpool and him could be Best Friends Forever without anyone else getting in between that. Deadpool knows all the things about him that matter (except that he’s never told him about Aunt May or Uncle Ben or his parents or any of his high school friends or his job, but whatever, man) and Deadpool doesn’t judge, just hugs Peter whenever he needs it and lets him make all the dumb decisions he wants. He doesn’t want to be anyone’s date, anyone’s commitment. He just wants to hang out with Deadpool.

But he also kind of wants to get laid, and so he texts Deadpool _ran into a friend, meeting them after work, don’t wait up_ with only one kissy emoji instead of the usual five.

The date goes well. Wade is hilarious and sweet and also kind of an asshole, which is perfect. He kind of reminds Peter of Deadpool, but it’s rude to think of your sexy roommate when you’re on a sexy date and they have different voices and Deadpool has never mentioned being scarred from head to toe, so Peter stops thinking about it.

He feels weird inviting a one night stand over to Deadpool’s place and when he explains this to Wade (vaguely), Wade gives him a grin. ‘Same deal here. My roommate’s only been living with me for a short while and I don’t want to freak him out with sex noises just yet. You know what, though? There isn’t a single disabled person in this restaurant.’

Peter raises an eyebrow. Wade’s a weirdo, but that’s _weird_ weird to say.

‘So that poor handicap bathroom downstairs is just sitting there unused. I’m sure it would be so sad if no one got in there and got up to some freaky shit tonight. All the regular bathrooms would think it’s a real sucker.’

Peter nods slowly. ‘That _would_ be tragic. I’ll think on that while I go to the bathroom,’ he says before he gets up and leisurely makes his way downstairs. Wade follows him after less than a minute, slipping into the bathroom (which is clean and has a door that’s closed top to bottom) and locking the door behind himself.

‘So, how freaky did you want to get?’, Peter asks.

‘I brought lube and condoms. Not to be a creep or anything, but I feel like that’s relevant. So we can get pretty freaky.’

‘Do you want to be freaky going in or… being gone into?’

‘Whatever you want, Petey-Pie. I go both ways. All ways, really.’

‘I’ve had like, a really shitty week and month, and like, year, and, and I think I would feel a lot better if you ate me out and then fucked me so hard they’ll hear it upstairs.’

‘Oh my god, can do. Come on, Petey-Princess, off with those sexy pants.’ Wade is already getting to his knees and okay, maybe he can stand a few dates for a guy who is this eager to eat ass. Wade is _good_ , makes Peter feel stuffed with just his tongue and two fingers. Peter presses his face into his own arm to keep quiet, even when Wade just keeps going like he could do this all day. It can’t have been long, not really, but Peter is already close and only gets closer when Wade gets up and stuffs the two fingers he had up inside Peter into Peter’s mouth.

‘You know what I’m thinking, babe?’, he murmurs. Peter nods, although he has no idea. ‘I’m thinking you’re all loosey goosey down there because you’re a slutty little Petey-Babe and all that lube would just be wasted on such an easy hole. I’ve got a condom that’s kind of slick, but that’s all you’re getting, what do you think of that?’

Peter nods eagerly with the two fingers still in his mouth and Wade pushes them deeper. Peter concentrates on not gagging, not choking, wants to show Wade how well he can take it, eyes steady on Wade.

Wade rolls on the condom one-handed, twists Peter around without taking the fingers out of his mouth, presses his forehead to the back of Peter’s head and whispers, ‘quiet now,’ one second before he pushes in. Hard.

Peter stays quiet, keeping his moans low and sexy, begging Wade for more even though he’s already giving Peter way too much. It _hurts_ , but that’s the point, that’s what makes it so good and when Peter starts crying, Wade licks a stripe up his face like he’s trying to taste the tears. He moves his hand to cover Peter’s mouth when Peter starts getting too loud and just keeps going, rough and deep.

It’s over way too soon, but Peter is wound up and comes fast and so does Wade, who cleans them both up and arranges Peter’s hair and his clothes into a less fucked-out look after.

‘Fuck,’ Wade murmurs into his neck while they’re having a little afterglow make-out session before they go back upstairs. ‘This has been my favourite public restroom fuck.’

‘Maybe we can try to top it, say, Friday?’

Wade laughs against his neck and Peter thinks maybe he could get used to this.

-

Deadpool seems cheerful when Peter gets back from his date (after a second public restroom quickie and a very long walk in the cold to clear his head from any sexy thoughts about Wade so that his suit wouldn’t be too tight in certain places when he put it on to go back to Deadpool’s place).

‘How was your night?’, he asks.

‘Good,’ Peter says.

‘Mine, too,’ Deadpool says.

They exchange a weird little shoulder bump when Peter gets comfortable on the couch, stealing two thirds of DP’s blanket in the process.

Deadpool puts on a scary movie, which means he wants to cuddle up to Peter like Peter isn’t way smaller than him. Peter doesn’t mind letting him. Things really did go well with Wade, but this is still better, just hanging out with DP, who makes sure the blanket is wrapped all the way around Peter’s feet because he knows he doesn’t like them sticking out and who insists on an extra forehead kiss when they go to bed to give Peter extra protection against the scary boogiemen from the movie.

A few days later, while they’re decorating cookies like Peter used to do with Aunt May (who had talked to a rabbi about whether or not late-December cookie-decorating would be a weird thing for a Jewish kid to do and who had eventually allowed Peter to do his own (ridiculously thorough) research and decide for himself), Peter starts to really think about the whole wanting-to-be-(boy?)friends-with-DP-Forever thing. 

Deadpool has icing on his mask and lets Peter dab it off with a napkin like a doting mom, then he “accidentally” gets icing on Peter’s suit just so he can get to do the same. Peter knows that if he could freeze time and stay here making cookies with Deadpool while Golden Girls plays in the background, he would. He’d pick this over any date with Wade Wilson, or anyone else for that matter.

‘Hey,’ he says, quietly, and Deadpool goes back to meticulously decorating his Happy Tree Unicorns cookies. ‘You have… you have, like, Sex Friends, right?’

Deadpool hums, trying to get the unicorn horn tearing open a cartoon human’s guts just right. 

‘Are you, like… Um, is it like a romantic thing?’

‘Nope. Well, I guess I was crushing pretty badly on Elektra and the whole thing with Rogue was also maybe kind of weird on my end, but that wasn’t a constant. It faded away after a while.’

Peter tries to focus on his own Rugrats Avengers cookies, sculpting toddler Captain America’s frown where he’s glaring at an oblivious toddler Iron Man. ‘But you stayed Sex Friends even after it went away?’

‘Yeah. The romantic stuff was never really the goal or the point of it or anything.’

‘How does it work? Like, when do you do it?’

‘Just, whenever we both feel like it. Most of my Sex Friends are never really in town, so that really helps. I’ve met a new Sex Friend, by the way. A sweet little twink with an ass that literally won’t quit.’

Peter had decided before starting this line of questioning that he was not going to be jealous of any of Deadpool’s Sex Friends. He likes how much DP loves all of his friends and how fondly he speaks of their sexcapades, but a twink with a decent ass? Really? That was supposed to be _his_ spot.

He wipes the dumb pout off his face before Deadpool can magically see it through his mask. ‘How do you meet new Sex Friends?’

‘I don’t know. Most of them are just X-Men or people I met while being Deadpool. I met my new guy just kind of randomly while out and about without even having the suit on. Yeah, so if you ever doubt how pretty I am without the mask, I’m pretty enough to get a hot twink to fuck me based on my face alone.’

‘That’s nice, DP. Good for you.’

‘Ooh. Are you jealous? Is this you being jealous? I promise I will always save some butt-fondling for you, Sweet-Cheeks.’

Deadpool’s leer translates even behind the mask. He makes a lot of jokes about grabbing Peter’s ass but he never actually does, which is kind of cool of him, although Peter wouldn’t actually mind a firm fondle every now and again.

‘What would you do if you started a relationship with someone? Like, what would you do with all your Sex Friends?’

‘I’d make sure my pal knew about them.’

‘You wouldn’t break things off?’

‘Nope. I’m not really that good at the monogamy stuff. Or at the not-having-sex-with-all-of-my-sexy-friends-stuff.’

‘And that would work?’

‘As long as my pal is comfortable with it and we both communicate the fuck out of each other, yeah. Why are you asking, do you want to make your own little Sex Friend club?’

‘No, I… I don’t know. I was just curious, I guess.’ And hoping that DP and him could once day be Best Boyfriends instead of Best Friends, but it was starting to feel like DP didn’t really have room for him on his Sex Club roster. Peter doesn’t know much about romance, but he’s pretty sure it’s supposed to be a pretty labour-intensive thing, an every day kind of thing. DP’s preference seems to be sporadic non-romantic stuff.

Deadpool gives him a long, searching look. ‘I’m gonna pretend not to know where this is going, okay, Spidey? You’re a real smart guy, you know. Bet you have great taste in men. And women, but does anyone have bad taste in women, you know? They’re _women_ , you’ve made a great choice by default, whoever you choose.’

‘This is not going anywhere if you don’t want that,’ Peter says quietly, kind of disappointed anyways. ‘I like being friends with you, DP. I’m good with us staying that way.’

Deadpool draws little icing heart eyes onto his next violent unicorn cookie. 'Thanks, Spidey. Let’s just keep it that way, eh?’

-

He meets Wade after work the next day and he’s got to really, really try his best not to yearn for Deadpool when Wade calls him “Petey-cheeks” and gives him a big, exaggerated smooch in greeting.

Wade takes him to “his place” with the promise of him cooking dinner, but then he struggles to find a key that fits on the front door for five full minutes, until he eventually discovers it’s hidden at the top of the doorframe instead of on his keychain. The place is dusty and Wade hurriedly gets rid of the rotting slice of pizza gathering dust on the dresser. He’s frantically wiping down surfaces as he tries to convince Peter that he can definitely finish a whole pizza every time and that he would never, ever leave a slice, ever. He seems mortified, which is sweet and he only becomes less mortified when Peter dirty-talks to him about stuffing him full of pizza after he’s unable to finish all of it. Wade doesn’t do bondage, but he’s a-okay with having Peter restrain his wrists while Peter kneels over his face and feeds him his cock, so that’s how they spend the next while. After that they move to the kitchen to start dinner, but they get derailed when Peter innocently asks about the XL tub of Crisco Wade has in his cupboard. Wade gives him a demonstration on Crisco’s many uses and ends up getting stuffed in all kinds of ways (Wade insists that QVC host roleplay is _totally_ a thing), although pizza is not involved.

By the time they’re done, Wade is too lazy and hazy too cook and proposes he take Peter to his favourite taco truck instead. It turns out to be Peter’s favourite taco truck as well, the one he introduced Deadpool to and that the two of them now go to at least once every week. 

They eat on the curb by the truck and a drunk guy walking by yells something weird about Wade’s scars, which kind of kills Wade’s sex-happy vibe. He’s still being cheerful, but he’s not as enthusiastic about his explanation of medieval sexual perversion as Peter would have expected him to be.

When they get back to Wade’s place, Peter finds some lube and some massage oil (both suspiciously covered in dust, but still normal-smelling and normal-looking) and Wade comes up with an entire lovey-dovey backstory to explain why Peter is making love to him so gently. 

It seems to help Wade feel more at ease, although once they’re done, he still insists on being the little spoon and snuggles up against Peter so firmly that Peter has to stop him before they fall off the bed.

As they cuddle, Wade asks about Peter’s job. He tells Wade that he works at Stark Industries and that everyone in New York thinks Tony Stark is a cool guy but that he’s actually an insecure asshole who doesn’t pay his employees for shit. Wade likes him when he’s being mean and tells him he has an in with Stark, that he can always convince him to pay Peter more money than he’d know what to do with.

‘’S that why you were at Stark Industries, because you’re friends with Tony Stark?’

‘Oh no, he wishes. He’s kind of like, doing experiments on me? But not in a bad way. Most experiments are mean and gross and all of that, and give you scars all over your body like mine, but his experiments are supposed to help me out.’

‘How so?’

‘I don’t know. I suck at explaining all of this. The scars kind of hurt sometimes? Not a crazy amount or anything, but he’s trying to synthetise a painkiller that would work for me, because I’m a real special guy, you know, so not everything works for me just like that.’

Peter traces his finger over Wade’s sternum. Maybe Wade is a mutant or something. ‘I didn’t know they hurt.’

‘Only a little, Baby-Cakes. I’m just humouring Mr. Stark. He’s gonna feel real smart when he figures that one out. So smart that he’s going to give you a raise. I won’t even threaten him with any weapons or anything. Unless a garotte counts as a weapon. But that would just be nit picking for nit picking’s sake.’

Wade does that sometimes, talks about weapons like he just has them lying around. Even here at his apartment, Peter only has to turn his head a little bit to have a dagger in his line of sight. He’s sure he should be more freaked out by that, but living with Deadpool has kind of made him numb to all of it.

‘What’s your job, huh?’

‘I’m kind of in between jobs, right now, I guess. I used to be a pretty bad guy, kind of like, doing illegal stuff and everything. But I’m trying to be better about that.’

‘What kind of illegal stuff?’

‘All kinds. But now I’m all good, promise.’

Peter won’t push, because he’s got plenty of secrets of his own that he’s keeping from Wade. ‘I think it’s really cool that you’ve turned over a new leaf.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I’m sure that wasn’t easy to do.’

Wade wiggles around in Peter’s hold, trying to get comfortable. ‘You’re a weird guy, Peter, you know that?’

‘Yeah. I know.’

‘You’re supposed to be freaked out by me saying I used to be a big bad.’

‘I am. Just not enough to get out of bed right now.’

‘Are you secretly a supervillain? Do you dress up in all spandex and beat the shit out of people?’

Peter chokes on his own saliva at that. ‘Are you asking me for a beating?’, he murmur/coughs teasingly.

Wade moans. ‘I’m definitely taking you up on that offer. Soon. Very soon. I can go again in, like, five minutes. I swear.’

Peter holds him a little tighter. ‘I’m good just like this,’ he mumbles into Wade’s neck. ‘I’ll beat you up some other time.’

‘Yeah? When?’

‘Tomorrow night?’

‘You’ve got a deal, baby.’

-

Wade Wilson would not generally describe himself as a stable person. Not even in the psychological sense, although he’s _definitely_ unstable in the psychological sense, but right now he means it in more of a temporal way. Every time someone shoots him in the head (which admittedly happens a lot), his memory gets a little shittier. He doesn’t remember his childhood or even his exact date of birth (he only knows that he’s very clearly a scorpio), sometimes he loses large chunks of time to someone deciding to cut him up into little chunks and burying all of the chunks in separate places so that he’ll just _stop fucking up Céline Dion’s legacy for one second, Wade, for fuck’s sake_ (that was Wolverine) or to giving someone permission to “play the trolley problem game with him” (that was Shiklah running him over with a train). 

He never misses a Bea Arthur Birthday Celebration Golden Girls marathon or a Canada Day forcing-Wolverine-to-do-karaoke-with-him Karaoke Night, but even he admits that he celebrates Taco Tuesday even when it isn’t Tuesday and doesn’t actually remember the last time he stepped into a puddle (not _that_ kind of puddle) on National Step in a Puddle Day.

He’s not very linear, is what it comes down to. He has a few friends here and there (Sex Friends, mostly, except for Weasel and Blind Al), but they’re all off doing their own thing most of the time, so he sees them when he sees them. 

He doesn’t do regular _anything_ and if he ever did before, he doesn’t even remember. But now he has two regular friends that he sees on a regular basis in a regular way like he’s some regular shmo.

Peter is his perfect little sex-angel, who is as enthusiastic about hurting Wade and sticking stuff up his butt that isn’t supposed to go up there as he is about Wade doing the same to him in return. They spend a lot of time having sex. Wade feels kind of guilty about leaving Spider-Man alone at the apartment all the time, because they did used to spend most of their time there together, but Spider-Man has his own little Sex Friend to get back to.

Spidey and him still hang out a lot. Wade plans to be more careful about physical touch, since his Spider-Babe seems to have convinced himself that he’s got a little bit of a crush on Wade, but Wade has never been one for self-restraint. They wrestle over the remote and cuddle on the couch and Wade convinces Spidey to hold him hanging from the ceiling so that Wade can try and fall asleep upside down like a bat ('You're more of a possum,' Spider-Man tells him). Their inevitable fall to the floor isn’t graceful, but his sleepy Spider-Bug just huffs grumpily and makes himself comfortable on Wade’s chest and so they spend the night together like that.

Still, Spidey is kind of mopey about Wade having blocked his little attempt to bring up his crush and Wade is entirely convinced that he’s fucked it all up and Spider-Man is going to move out. 

So Wade is very surprised when Spidey puts four hundred dollars cash on the kitchen table on December 31st and tells Wade he’ll be out of his hair by February. Wade doesn’t mind at all that he’s not rid of his Spidey-Pie just yet. He might even consider sabotaging his eventual attempt to get his own place, because having Peter is great, but having someone like Spidey is impossibly even better. Because Spidey knows when Wade is in a Cartoon Mood and when he’s in a Casual Porn Watching Mood by just looking at him and doesn’t mind that Wade has Very Strong Opinions on the acceptable and unacceptable uses of maple syrup ( _no savoury applications_ ). He seems to actually _like_ Wade and that’s without even having played with any of his best parts.

Peter already had plans for New Year’s and so Deadpool spends the night with Spider-Man, patrolling for a little before they go home and watch both Mamma Mia movies so that Spidey can fall asleep half-sitting in Wade’s lap (their friendship _has_ evolved to platonic lap sitting and grinding up a tiny bit!). It’s a nice night, so nice that Wade proposes to a half-asleep Spider-bug that they should invite Deadpool’s new fling to do this sometime, so that Wade can have both of them be mean to him at the same time while they sit in his lap and he fondles their respective asses.

Spider-Man just grinds his perfect ass into Wade’s lap half-heartedly and prods at him until he lies back on the couch further so that his Spider-babe can be more comfortable. '‘S not like you ever actually touch my ass', his grumpy Spidey grumbles.

Wade gives him a careful, very non-sexual, non-objectifying pat on his ass and Spidey arches his back happily, like he’s a cat that’s getting all of the attention it knows it deserves.

‘Thanks for spending New Year’s Eve with me,’ Spider-Man mumbles into Deadpool’s shoulder, hugging him with a bit too much Spider-strength.

‘’S no problem, Baby-Boy.’

Spidey has been all kinds of flirty with Wade these last few weeks. He’s the one who initiated all of the lap-sitting in the first place and he’s been rubbing himself all over Wade from his newfound favourite seat. Wade has been taking his time to give all of Spidey’s sexy behaviour a long, hard, throbbing (yep, he’s going there) think and he’s pretty sure he’s made up his mind, although he’s already regretting it. He’s not going to fuck his feisty Spider-Babe, not even if Spidey pulls out all the stops, seduction-wise. He’s not sure if Spidey is all that comfortable sharing Wade with a bunch of Sex Friends and Wade wouldn’t want to risk pushing him to pretend to be okay with it. He’s very proud that he came to this Good Person Conclusion all by himself and he’d boast about it to Spider-Man if Spider-Man wasn’t the subject of the conclusion. 

(Also Wade is kind of ( _kind of_ ) crushing on Spidey-Pie and he’s never, ever going to risk fucking their beautiful little platonic/romantic dance up, not even for a shot at some sex.)

He does pet Spidey’s ass a tiny bit and his Spidey seems happy with the contact, keeping his hold on Wade comfortably tight.

‘I have a question,’ Spidey mumbles then and Wade knows that probably means there’s going to be more Crush Talk.

‘Yeah?’

‘Does your new guy know about your Sex Friends?’

‘No.’

‘Are you planning on telling him?’

‘If necessary, yes.’

‘When would it be necessary?’

‘If it were to be more of a longer-term thing, not just a good week or whatever it is right now.’

‘And what would… what would that conversation be like?’

‘I’d just tell him that I have arrangements like the one with me and him with a few other people, that I’d like to have the same kind of thing with him. Lay down boundaries, expectations, all that stuff.’

‘What kinds of boundaries?’

‘I don’t really have that many, but he could have all kinds of boundaries. Just things he might not be comfortable with, you know. Like how much to others can know about him, whether he's okay with be being with him when I've already been with someone else that day. I can be anything.’

‘And expectations?’

‘Things he wants from me, for it be good for him. But you’re not… This doesn’t matter to you, Spidey.’

Spider-Man deflates a little. ‘Sure it doesn’t,’ he mumbles. 

‘Hey,’ he says a while later, tracing one finger over Wade’s shoulder. ‘If we both just rolled our masks up like we do to eat and made out, that would be cool, right?’

Wade is surprised by this. His Spider-Babe is very diligent about protecting his secret identity. They never sneak a peek while eating and they never even talk while their masks are up, so that their voices, un-modified by suit-speakers and such, stay unknown to one another.

‘That would be the coolest,’ Deadpool says regretfully. ‘But I don’t think we should.’ He’s not sure why, but the idea of Spider-Man seeing (and worse, _feeling_ ) his scars has him on edge. He’s never really hidden them from anyone. He’s not exactly proud of them, but he doesn’t have much of a choice other than to accept them, and so he does, doesn’t care how weirded out little kids get when he walks past, doesn’t care that half the people he sleeps with these days have a some kind of fucked up fetish for disaster. But Spidey has never seen them before. He probably still imagiens Wade to be smooth and handsome under the mask. Wade would like to keep it that way, because if Spider-Man treated him differently after finding out about the scars, that would hurt more than any weird look or 'let's pretend you're dead, it's gonna be hot, I swear', he's ever gotten.

Spidey deflates.

‘See,’ Deadpool says quickly, because he keeps disappointing his Spidey-Pie, feels like the worst person in the world watching the way he averts his lenses. ‘Not because I don’t want to. I’d love to. There’s all kinds places where I’d like to put my mouth on you, see? But the thing is, I have the most beautiful chin on this planet. Like, shockingly beautiful. People weep at the look of my perfect chin. And I just don’t think you’ll be able to handle it when it turns out you don’t measure up, you know? You’re a pretty jealous guy. I _know_ you’re doing extra squats just to get your ass perkier than mine. And you’d just be _so_ jealous of my flawless chin.’

Spider-Man sighs, only smiling a little bit. ‘Sure, DP. I’m gonna go take a nap.’

He accepts Wade’s forehead kiss with minimal grumbling and then he’s off to bed, leaving Wade to feel like the biggest asshole in the multiverse. 

-

Spider-Man doesn’t really know how to get an appointment with Mr. Stark, but he knows how to contact Iron Man, which is a safer bet anyways, so he swings to the top of Avengers Tower and waits for Jarvis to get Tony after he’s realised that Avengers Tower has actual security that Spider-Man can’t just speed past.

Mr. Stark hasn’t suited up, is in a T-shirt and jeans like he isn’t the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. Spider-Man hates that. One time he got a coffee stain on his pants _during_ work and his supervisor scolded him like he’d committed corporate fraud. And here Tony is, probably actually comitting corporate fraud and wearing a shirt that has so many grease stains it might as well have been tie-dyed.

‘Sup, Spider-Man,’ he says.

‘Hi. A friend of mine told me you’re working on painkillers for him and I want to help out.’

Mr. Stark frowns. ‘You want to help out? I'm not gonna be making the pills out of webs, you know.’

‘Yeah, I know. I’ve got a master’s in Chemistry, Biology and Engineering. At least two of those should come in handy, right?’

Tony seems confused. ‘Wait, you do?’

Peter is confused, too. He’s mentioned this to the Avengers before, right? Has he not mentioned this to the Avengers before? ‘Yeah. How do you think I’m doing all of this Spider-Man stuff? These web-shooters didn’t exactly come free with the radioactive spider bite.’

‘You made those?’

‘Yeah. I thought you knew this.’

‘How would I know this? You never tell me anything.’

‘I’m telling you now. I made them and I can make the painkillers, too.’

‘Sure. I’m actually kind of stuck, anyways.’

Mr. Stark shows him to the workshop, explains his progress and works on Iron Man upgrades while Peter catches up on all of his work so far.

‘Why didn’t you ask Dr. Banner for help with this?’, he asks after a while because Mr. Stark really is hopelessly lost in all of the bio-chemistry.

‘It’s, um, it’s supposed to be a gift for him, when it’s done. His transformations are really painful and standard pain-killers don’t really have an effect on him because of his metabolism.’

‘Oh. That’s kind of nice of you.’

‘Yeah, sometimes I’m nice.’

Peter rolls his eyes. Nice enough to pay him peanuts, sure.

‘I’m surprised Deadpool told you about this. He wasn’t exactly comfortable about offering me his help.’

‘Deadpool?’

‘Yeah. You said he told you.’

‘Deadpool didn’t tell me about this. A friend of mine did. His name is Wade.’

Mr. Stark pauses. ‘I know Deadpool’s name is Wade. You don’t have to protect his identity, kid. He’s pretty easy to recognise out of the suit, with the scars and everything.’

Peter is not stupid, but he needs some time to understand what Mr. Stark is actually saying.

‘You mean… Deadpool’s name is Wade Wilson?’

‘Yeah. I thought you knew this, Spider-Man.’

‘I do, I do! It’s just… It’s just funny, you know? Guess I never said it out loud. Wade Wilson. It’s really funny. I have to go.’

He’s out of there in two seconds, throwing himself off the building and slinging over to the next with all the speed he can manage.

Deadpool and Wade Wilson are the same person. Which means that he’s told a fellow superhero his real name just to be able to have some sex. He’s the worst superhero on earth.

This is not what’s supposed to happen. No matter how much of a piece of shit Peter Parker is, Spider-Man is better than that. Spider-Man is all about responsibility and self-control and about being more than just _idiotic, stupid, stupid_ Peter Parker. He’s separate from Peter although now, suddenly, he isn’t anymore, because Deadpool knows both of them.

He hangs on to the Empire State Building’s lightning rod as he takes out his phone and reads through his messages with Wade. He didn’t give Wade the same number he gave DP, because he wanted to be all cool and professional and keep his two lives separate. Apparently Deadpool did the same.

He considers cancelling on Wade tonight, but eventually he decides to just ghost him completely, stand him up and everything, to make sure Wade won’t ever want to think of Peter again.

He feels like shit sitting around in the living room reading the texts Deadpool sends to his Peter-phone when he’s starting to realise Peter isn’t going to show up. They agreed to meet at Wade’s place, so at least he doesn’t have to go through the public humiliation of being stood up at a crowded restaurant.

Wade comes home eventually, crashing into the couch face first with a dramatic sigh.

Peter pats his back soothingly. ‘Bad date?’

‘He _ghosted_ me. It’s not that he cancelled with a shitty excuse. He _ghosted_ me. That’s never a good sign.’

Yep, Peter can already imagine it, Guinness Book of World Records, Worst Person in the World: Peter Parker.

He pulls DP into a hug. ‘Maybe he has diarrhoea. But he left his phone in the kitchen and he can’t leave the toilet so he can’t let you know. Maybe he fell into a manhole and joined the sewer alligators. Maybe he has gum in his hair and got really embarrassed.’

Deadpool flops around until he’s lying on top of Peter and pressing his face into Peter’s shoulder. ‘This is the worst,’ he says. ‘Where am I going to find a twink who will bully me like my guy did?’

They spend the evening on the couch, Peter petting Deadpool’s head and feeling like the biggest fuck-up in the history of fuck-ups. There are people who kick puppies who are less of a fuck-up than he is. He basically did kick a puppy, based on Wade’s sweet kicked-puppy whines.

Peter is going to full-blown Catholic Hell (well, he already has gone there once with Deadpool to go see Shiklah about a shady horse, but next time they’re going to make him stay).

-

Wade tries his hardest not to let it show, but he’s definitely moping over losing one of his Sex Friendships so abruptly, with no explanation. He’s less excited about patrols and Avengers party-crashing fun. Even Taco Tuesday only gets a normal amount of smiles out of him.

Peter feels like the worst human ever as he tries to comfort DP as best as he can. On top of that he kind of misses Wade. Sure, Wade is right there, falling asleep curled up with him on the couch every night as he valiantly pretends not to check his phone every ten minutes. But Deadpool treats him differently from how Wade used to treat him. Wade wasn’t as careful about getting close to Peter, didn’t hesitate to kiss him or fuck him or ask about Peter’s life outside the Spider-Man suit.

It’s unsurprising that he caves eventually and texts Wade from his Peter-phone. He’s a terrible superhero for doing it. He’s not supposed to risk his secret identity, risk Spider-Man, like this, but he’s just as bad of a person for avoiding Wade without an explanation the way he is.

 _I swear I wasn’t ghosting you,_ he tries. _I can’t say what happened but I promise it’s not as shady as it sounds. I’m sorry for not answering my phone for two weeks. You could punish me tonight if you want._

By the time he gets back from work, Wade is pretty much bouncing out of his house to go get his safehouse cleaned up and ready for his guy.

Peter meets him there later, and it’s all a flurry of rushed kisses and desperate touches from there. 

Wade ties him up all nice and tight and massages his prostate through as many orgasms as he can to make up for all the orgasms he hasn’t been able to give Peter in the last few weeks. There’s lots of spanking in between, and fucking and even some breathplay, when Peter proposes it. Wade breaks out his meanest Deadpool voice to tell Peter to take it while he coaxes orgasm after orgasm out of Peter and makes him choke on his cock.

Whenever he remembers that this isn’t just Wade, but Deadpool, too, Deadpool, who knows who Spider-Man is, who is supposed to respect Spider-Man as a hero, to take him seriously, he feels so ashamed. Peter Parker can do whatever the hell he wants, but Spider-Man can’t just be enthusiastically subbing for his superhero co-worker like this. He pushes those thoughts away, though, knows that he can freak out about them later instead.

Wade notices that he’s a little more spaced out than he usually is (shame gets him there, sue him) and bundles him up against him when he’s done bullying orgasms out of Peter, arranging the blankets around them when Peter shivers.

‘If someone hurt you while you were away, I can always fuck them up for you. Not perma-sleep fucking up. Just regular, like, kneecap-damage fucking up.’

Peter shakes his head, trying to feel a little less foggy. ‘No one hurt me.’

‘No? Not even scary old me? I you needed a break I would be fine with that, you know?’

Peter snuggles up against Wade a little harder, to make sure he really, really feels wanted.’

‘I didn’t want a break from you at all. That was the worst part about the last few weeks, not getting to see you.’ And realising that he’s the dumbest slut in all of the world and that he fucked up anything he ever did to even deserve to be Spider-Man, that was pretty bad, too.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I missed you.’

Wade presses a kiss to his shoulder. ‘I kind of missed you too.’

Peter wishes he could make fun of him for how much of an understatement he knows that is.

They end up sleeping over at Wade’s safehouse, waking up in the middle of the night for sleepy, desperate sex that’s all faded and sweet, Wade’s cock slipping between his thighs and his hand tight around Peter’s cock.

They get up early to fool around some more before Peter goes to work and when he gets back, now to Deadpool’s actual apartment, Deadpool is there, wearing an obnoxious Canadian flag apron over his suit and making pancakes for dinner (although he’s probably going to upend an entire fruit bowl over Peter's head later to make sure he gets all of his vitamins). They spend the evening lazing on the couch until Wade finally manages to prod Peter out of his pancake-induced food-coma so that they can go out for patrol.

-

Peter is still feeling like shit about having revealed his identity to Deadpool, even if Deadpool doesn’t actually know, but despite that things are good. DP takes good care of him, somehow convincing Peter to stay at his place for another month, although Peter convinces him to double Peter’s contribution towards rent again, now that he’s getting back to his feet financially. They fuck a lot and cuddle a lot and do well during patrols (Peter feels like he has to prove his worth as Spider-Man to himself all over again, but Deadpool is very encouraging of his extra vigorous bad guy-clobbering).

Peter eventually goes back to Avengers Tower to help Tony out with the painkillers. He even asks Deadpool’s permission to help out, telling him Tony told him about the project.

By the end of February, they have a trial batch ready to go. DP is understandably squicky about being a test subject, but bravely tries them out anyways. Peter talked Tony into letting Wade try them out at his own place because Peter hates how antsy DP gets in Tony’s labs. And so they spend their weekend on the couch, Spider-Man in Deadpool’s lap (where he can best observe him), his notepad tossed away on the coffee table behind him as they both wait for the painkillers to kick in.

‘How does it feel?’, Peter asks when Deadpool finally starts to relax into the couch.

‘Weird,’ DP says. ‘I think it’s working.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I feel… I feel way less than I normally do.’

‘You’re losing sensitivity?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Peter drags his fingers down Deadpool’s arm, not applying much pressure. ‘How’s that feel?’

‘I still feel it the way I normally would. But I just… don’t really feel anything else. No pain.’ He pulls Peter in by the back of his head to press their foreheads together. ‘Thanks, Spidey-Pie.’

He sounds kind of choked up, but Peter decides not to mention it.

They nap on the couch for a while (because Mr. Stark really does _not_ believe in sleep) and then Wade idly flips through TV channels while Peter uses him as a body pillow. At four fifteen in the afternoon, Wade reaches for the notepad on the coffee table, cradling Peter close so as not to jostle him too much, and writes down, _1615 hours – reaction has worn off completely_.

‘Do you want another one?’, Peter asks, not quite awake just yet, but getting there.

‘No, Baby-Boy. No need to get used to something I don’t get to keep.’

‘You do. We’ll even make sure it lasts longer next time.’

‘No need, babe. Mr. Dr. Hulk Man is going to be plenty happy with these. He only needs them to work quickly, not for long.’

‘But you do.’

‘Stark isn’t doing this for me, though.’

‘I am. I want to do this.’

‘He’s not gonna want to pay for all that. And I need to stay in his good graces, I already have another favour to ask from him.’

‘Oh, what?’

‘My guy works for him. He’s not being paid as much as he deserves.’

‘Your guy who ghosted you for half a month? You’d do that for him?’

‘Jealous, Spidey-Pie?’

‘You know I am,’ Peter says.

Deadpool fondles his ass consolingly. ‘You know I’d do the same for you. I love all my feisty twinks equally.’

Peter rolls his eyes. Then he gets a little more serious. ‘I don’t mind that you like sleeping with people that aren’t me. Seriously. I think that’s really sweet. But it just… It sucks that you don’t seem to want to sleep with me at all. Not that you should! I’m not saying that you should want to sleep with me because there are other people you want to sleep with or anything! But you… I thought you wanted to for a while. But you keep saying you don’t and then you keep acting like you do.’

‘I’m being responsible. That’s what good guys do, right? I thought you’d be proud of me.’

‘But why? What’s the problem?’

‘I just don’t really know if, you know, if that would be better than what we have right now.’

Spider-Man deflates. He’s been selfish, all this time, lying to Wade like this. Wade wants to be with Peter, but he doesn’t actually want to be with Spider-Man, who is his roommate and his crime-fighting pal. Wade’s whole thing with Peter has been going on under false pretences. If he had all of the information, he probably would have made a lot of decisions differently and Peter knowingly withholding all of that information from him is just all kinds of unfair.

Peter should break things off with Wade. He knows this, but it still sucks to actually accept.

He presses his masked lips to Wade’s masked cheek. ‘You’re right,’ he says quietly.

Deadpool pats his ass companionably. ‘Come on, get that forehead down here so I can make sure you sleep tight.’

-

The next time Wade hangs out with Peter, Peter spends the entire time trying to come up with a way to explain to Wade why they shouldn’t see each other anymore. Instead of actually executing any of his stress-inducing, overly planned out strategies, they find a bunch of big marbles at Wade’s place and see how many they can fit up inside Peter. It doesn’t seem like a good time to whip out the “goodbye forever” speech, with him sobbing and Wade petting his sensitive belly and telling him 'just one more,' for the thrid time as he lubes up another marble, and so he doesn’t. 

They spend the night at Wade’s place again, with lots of sweet, sleepy middle-of-the-night sex and some unexpectedly intense early morning fucking.

They meet up the next day, too, and Peter can already tell that Wade is going to have the “do you want to be my Sex Friend?” talk before Wade actually sits him down to have it. It’s good. Peter should be happy about this. It’s the out he was looking for.

He shakes his head as Wade is explaining. ‘You don’t want to be exclusive?’, he interrupts in his most convincing Disapproval Voice.

The brief look of hurt that flashes in Wade’s eyes makes him feel like a complete douchebag.

Wade is nice about it, though, seems to feel guilty for not explaining his extensive sex life to Peter sooner.

Peter leaves early, without even a kiss goodbye and does everything he can to not think about Wade’s heartbroken expression when he was showing Peter out, always a good host.

Wade doesn’t return to their apartment until a long while later. 

‘I know I said I wouldn’t have time for patrol tonight, but do you want to go anyways?’, he says.

Peter nods and they spend the rest of the night roaming around New York in silence. When they get back, they both lay down on the couch instead of heading off to their own rooms and if Wade holds Spider-Man a lot tighter than he would usually, well, Spider-Man isn’t going to bring it up.

Wade seems to be really bummed out about losing Peter, but Peter knows that he has to be resolute no matter how guilty he feels.

Weeks go by and Wade gets better about all of it, seems genuinely cheerful more often than he is forced cheerful.

Things are still good between Deadpool and Spider-Man, which is a positive, at least, although Peter feels like he doesn’t deserve it. They’ve started sharing an actual bed, since sleeping on the couch every night was starting to take a toll on both their backs. Spider-Man sometimes forgets that middle of the night fucks or make-out sessions are something he doesn’t get to have like this, in this apartment, but Wade doesn’t seem to mind waking up to a masked Spider-Man nuzzling his neck with a faint moan.

Then he gets an e-mail from Tony Stark himself (on his work e-mail, not even on the Spider-Man e-mail address he made that goes entirely unused), telling him he’s getting a promotion and a raise to go along with it, and that Mr. Stark doesn’t understand why he’d be friends with Wade but that it’s turning out well for him _just this once_. He wants to thank Wade for that without revealing that he’s actually Peter and so he makes him burritos from scratch. It goes south pretty quickly, the way most things Peter does in the kitchen do, but Wade helps him out and Masterchefs all of Peter’s mistakes into perfectly rolled burritos. They don’t even taste charred, just smoky.

He starts to apartment hunt for real in March, but each time he goes to see an apartment, Wade goes with him and scares the living daylights out of the landlord showing them around. Every single one of Peter’s applications gets rejected, even for the shittiest shitholes he can find.

Wade seems entirely unconcerned about this, even when Peter gets mad at him about it. Despite Peter’s annoyance at DP, they still sleep in the same bed, viciously prodding at one another until either of them finally gives up and lets the other be the little spoon. 

It’s this strange dance of tension and comfort, where every night their couch cuddles (aka lap-sitting and grinding up and down, respectively) will get slightly too intense and Wade will go re-clean the entire kitchen to cool down, but where everything is also still the same as it usually is. They take snack breaks on rooftops during patrol and make a competition out of catching the most bad guys, they finish all of Golden Girls and start right back from the beginning, they move on to Daydream after perfecting their renditions of every song on E=MC² and Deadpool makes Peter dinner every night, finding a way to make Peter like even the grossest of vegetables.

Peter still misses what he had with Wade, the sex and all the things they talked about that he can never mention to Deadpool and he knows that Wade is still moping over Peter sometimes, when he thinks Spidey won’t notice, but they’re both doing a lot better than they were before. It’s almost good just like this. The most important parts of what he had with Wade were things he has with DP, too, and especially now that they’re sleeping in the same bed every night, things feel almost perfect.

Of course that never fucking lasts. They’re crashing another Avengers mission, but this time it’s an even worse idea than usual. It’s the middle of the night, around the time that Spider-Man and DP would usually wrap up their patrol and Spider-Man definitely has a concussion. He’s been trying not to let Wade notice, but Wade is way more perceptive than he always lets on and sticks to Spidey’s side like glue for the entire fight. He’d tried, for approximately one second, to convince Spider-Man to sit this one out, but Spider-Man refused, because he can’t just leave the city of New York and the Avengers to fend for themselves against Mysterio. Mysterio is supposed to be _his_ archnemesis.

The Avengers trust DP when he tells them Spider-Man and him are going to fight as a unit tonight and let them fight together like they’re doing a three-legged race. It’s all a little blurry to Spider-Man, who isn’t sure what Mysterio is even trying to do. He’s created literal fog, on top of the fogginess in Spidey’s head. It’s bubble gum pink and _thick_. Once they get in, trying to get close enough to Mysterio to do some actual damage, he can’t even see Deadpool anymore a foot away from him, although DP has got his hand clenched in Spidey’s suit, right over his hip, so tightly that Spidey is worried the Spandex might tear.

He grabs DP’s waist to sling them up to the rooftop where Mysterio is. It’s the slanted rooftop of a fancy brownstone, for some reason, which Peter doesn’t understand when there are so many perfectly fine flat rooftops around.

‘There you are!’, Mysterio cackles. The fog is thinner, here, and Mysterio seems to have some kind of plan for them, starts off on a supervillain monologue to explain his evil scheme. 

Deadpool has let go of Spider-Man to grab both of his katanas, which Spider-Man realises too late, when he’s already starting to fall off the slippery fucking roof. He hears a lot of yelling and his own blood rushing in his ears, and then he doesn’t really hear much of anything anymore.

-

When he wakes up, it’s to more yelling. Iron Man and Deadpool, both sounding deadly and furious.

‘I’m still not fucking done with you. _You_ took a kid with a concussion into a battle zone.’

‘I can see why he felt like he needed to go in. Where the fuck were all of you? Mysterio is one guy and he’s a fucking idiot, how long could it have taken for six people to handle that?’

‘That’s not the issue. The issue is that you took a wounded person into a battlefield, let them get on top of a rooftop and then let them fall off.’

‘Spider-Man makes his own decisions. None of you ever respect that about him.’

‘Guys,’ Dr. Banner says mildly, closer to Spider-Man than DP and Mr. Stark. ‘Time to go. You’ve got three seconds.’

They both hurry out of the room. After that there’s silence. Spidey can hear Dr. Banner move around the room, but he’s pretty sure there’s no one else there.

Spider-Man pushes himself to wake up further, get out of all of the fog his mind is captured in. Physical check: no broken back, no broken neck, mask on.

His hand flies up to his face. His mask _is_ on. That’s good.

He opens his eyes. Dr. Banner is standing by the bed, in Spider-Man’s line of sight, but giving him some space as well.

‘Good morning,’ he says. ‘You have a concussion. Skull fracture, a few nasty bruises on your face. Your eye socket and your jaw broke, but they’re already mostly healed. Everything is healing well, the skull, too. I’ve put your medical chart on the bedside table here if you want to review it.’

‘Did my mask come off?’

Dr. Banner looks apologetic. ‘There wasn’t really a way, with all of the injuries to your face, to keep it on. A handful of people saw. I’m sorry, Spider-Man.’

‘Did Deadpool see?’

A frown crosses Dr. Banners face, but he doesn’t comment on how weird it is that not even DP knows what Peter’s face looks like. He shakes his head. ‘Not sure. He was pretty busy scaring the shit out of Tony. I know Thor saw and Tony saw, but I don’t really know who else. We can ask around, though, give you a definitive list of people who know.’

Spidey nods. ‘That would be great. Thanks, Dr. Banner.’

‘I do have one question, if it’s not too invasive. Are you still in school? You look about university student age.’

‘Oh. I’m twenty-four. I graduated a few years ago.’

Dr. Banner nods. ‘So when you started out as Spider-Man you were…’

‘Seventeen.’

Dr. Banner nods. ‘I know you’ve got Deadpool to help you out, but if you ever need anything he can’t provide, the Avengers really are always here for you. If being Spider-Man causes problems with jobs, with housing, anything. No questions asked. We all need help with that kind of stuff sometimes.’

Spidey nods. ‘Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.’

-

Dr. Banner only lets him go home after a few more hours of observation and after that, he’s under Nurse Deadpool’s strict care. DP seems kind of off, his cheer feeling forced, but that might just be because Spidey almost died only a few hours ago. Deadpool always gets kind of weird when Spidey does something dumb like almost die by falling of a building.

They spend the entire day in bed, Wade waking him up every few hours to stuff him full of chicken soup (with tiny matzo balls!) and a pork-free version of Wade’s favourite pork tacos from the taco truck that uses canned jackfruit instead. It’s so ridiculously thoughtful of Wade that Peter, still kind of concussed, feels his eyes tear up a little.

Wade checks his skull for fractures later, firmly pressing against Peter’s masked scalp.

‘You could take the mask off, if it’s easier. You saw, right, when Dr. Banner was trying to fix my face?’

Even with the mask covering it, Peter knows Wade is making the exact same face he made when Peter broke up with him. ‘As long as you don’t consent to me seeing your face, it’s like I never saw it at all, okay?’

‘But…’

Wade shakes his head, continuing his exploration of Peter’s skull with his fingers. 

It makes sense that he’d rather pretend not know that Spider-Man and Peter Parker have the same face. He must hate Peter for what he did to Wade, which means that he hates Spider-Man now, too. Better to pretend nothing’s changed, so that they can at least try and stay friends.

‘I’m sorry, for, you know.’

Wade nods. ‘Yeah. No biggie.’

They’re quiet for a while. ‘I got a call from Wolverine,’ Wade says then. ‘Canada needs me and all that. So once you’re all better I’ll be out of your hair.’

‘You’re leaving?’

‘Yeah.’

Peter nods. ‘Okay. I really am sorry, you know.’

Wade strokes the back of his head. ‘I know.’

-

Wade runs most of the way to Canada. Toronto isn’t even _that_ far away and all the damage he causes by not eating or sleeping heals itself after a while.

He lied about Wolverine having called him, but he finds Wolverine anyways, after he’s stolen a car and driven out to Wolverine’s favourite secluded cabin where he’s moping about some Phoenix related gripe or another. They blow off some steam, mainly figuratively and only sometimes literally, because when blood hits snow, it does steam a little. It doesn’t really help much, and after two weeks, Wolverine sends him back to New York because _Wade_ is killing the vibe.

Spider-Man, _Peter_ , is all moved out by the time he gets back, confirming what Wade already knew, that Spidey never really wanted to be with him in the first place, just wanted a safe place to stay and a couple of hugs to get him through the night. There’s no shame in that. It’s good, even. Wade would have fucked up whatever he had going on with Peter anyways, if Peter hadn’t ended it when he realised he was actually fucking Deadpool all along. It’s great that Spidey doesn’t want him like that, that they can just be friends instead. Friends are better.

He knows Spider-Man still goes out on patrol, but he doesn’t stop by the rooftop above Wade’s apartment anymore, sticks to other crappy neighbourhoods in Queens instead.

He only sees Peter again when Stark is showing him out at the Tower after he’s gone through a test for the latest round of painkillers. It’s a bit of a pile up in the elevator. They’re only on floor twenty four when Peter gets in, a long way left to go down. 

Peter is making sad eyes at Wade, Wade is pretending not to recognise him and Stark is being oblivious, until he suddenly goes, ‘Wait a minute!’, and whirls on Peter.

‘Spider-Man? You work here?’

Peter seems mortified. ‘Yeah. I’m – I’m on my lunch break right now. I'll get back to work in like ten minutes. I swear.’

‘ _How long have you been working here?_ ’ Stark’s voice is very high. Wade is pretty excited about the prospect of Peter pummelling him with literature on unions and labour ethics from now on into eternity.

‘I started my internship a year and a half ago.’

‘You did an internship.’ Stark sounds scared.

Peter glares. ‘ _Yes._ You really need to review your labour practices sometime.’

Tony’s eyes are wide, like he’s just seen a particularly malicious, chronically underpaid ghost. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Good point.’

He presses the button for the next floor down, eight, and flees out of the elevator once the doors slide open.

Leaving Deadpool alone with both of his favourite twinks.

‘Hi,’ Peter says in a small voice. ‘I’m sorry for, you know. For everything. I have a new apartment so I’m finally out of your hair.’

‘Yeah. Finally,’ DP says numbly. ‘No more blanket-hogging fiends in my house.’

‘Do you – is everything okay with you?’

‘Yeah. I’m doing great. Did your skull heal all bumpy and gross?’

‘Dr. Banner checked it a few days ago. Everything is where it’s supposed to be.’

Wade nods. ‘Good.’ 

There’s an awkward silence. ‘How was Canada?’

‘Red, white and mapley,’ Deadpool says. Once the elevator doors slide open at the ground floor, he’s the first one out. ‘See you,’ he says.

Peter just gives him hopeful finger guns.

-

Spider-Man shows up on the Good Rooftop a few days later. They go on patrol like they used to, although there are less snack breaks and no Mariah Carey-offs.

Peter gets too close to the edge of a rooftop, looking just a little wobblier than Deadpool can take and Deadpool hauls him back from the edge so hard that Peter lands flat on his ass in the middle of the roof. Wade helps him up and tells him he’s sorry, but Peter shakes his head.

‘This isn’t going to work. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried.’

Wade can only nod because it really does not work. They go their separate ways again and things suck just a tiny bit harder now that Wade knows for _sure_ they’re never going to be the same.

-

Spidey still patrols on his own almost every night. Deadpool knows this because he knows where Peter lives now and follows him around when he leaves his apartment late at night, putting on his suit in an alley and slinging around the city looking for bad guys to clobber.

Spidey finds Terry eventually. They catch Terry stealing purses pretty much every other patrol. He’s a decent guy, just kind of kicks on being a klepto. He’s not violent, doesn’t even mind that Spidey always insists on taking all the purses he stole and returning them. The thrill is just in getting the purses for him, and maybe also in getting to have a little chat with Spider-Man and Deadpool before they send him on his way.

Spider-Man isn’t as nice to him as he usually is, though. Deadpool almost feels like he should step in, when Spidey actually punches him. Normally they always go super easy on Terry.

Terry makes a wounded noise and Spider-Man goes still. ‘Fuck!’ He springs back from Terry, taking in the damage he’s done. Terry’s nose is bleeding, but nothing seems to be broken. 

‘Sorry, Terry!’, Spidey says quickly, helping Terry to his feet. ‘You don’t deserve that. Here.’ He gets a hanky out of his backpack, which he brought along this time, and they sit on an overturned shopping cart while Terry squeezes the bridge of his nose and uses the hanky to wipe the blood from his face.

‘Yeah, you seem like you’re in a shit mood. Where’s Deadpool? He always cheers you right up.’

Peter deflates even further, looking like the smallest, saddest Spider-Bean in the world.

‘He’s the one who made you sad, huh?’, Terry asks.

‘I made him sad, more like,’ Spidey says. Deadpool frowns. That’s not what happened.

‘What’d you do, kiddo?’

‘I lied to him and I… I pretended that I didn’t want to hang out with him anymore, even though I actually wanted to hang out with him even more than we did before. And then he found out that I lied and now we’re not hanging out anymore at all.’

‘Well, that does suck, Spider-Man. Sounds to me like you should talk to him about it.’ Then Terry looks up to Deadpool’s fire escape hideaway and winks.

He gets up, only a little wobbly, and starts towards the main street, still pressing Spidey's hanky to his nose. ‘You’ll take care of the purses, won’t you, Spider-Man?’

‘Sure,’ Spidey says, going to pick up the four purses laying scattered on the alley asphalt and starting to dig through the first one for a driver’s license.

Deadpool carefully climbs down from his hiding spot.

Spidey is surprised to see him, but he just shrinks into himself, not making lens-contact and scuffing his feet like he’s a graffiti-enthusiastic teenager who’s about to get grounded for spray-painting a smiley face onto a train. (Wade, well-adjusted adult that he is, resolutely does _not_ think about how badly he wants to roleplay that exact scenario with Peter in a sexy setting.)

‘Hi,’ Deadpool says. ‘Terry really enjoyed that, I could tell.’

‘Well, good to know at least someone is getting something out of this.’

‘What you said to him, is that really what you think happened?’

Spidey seems confused, finally looking up at Deadpool. ‘That _is_ what happened.’

‘It’s not, though. What happened is that you accidentally slept with me, when you didn’t even want to do that in the first place, and that you accidentally revealed your identity to me, which you didn’t want to do, either, and then I kept pushing you to be friends with me despite all that. I do this all the time, Spidey, push too hard and make people uncomfortable.’

‘You didn’t make me uncomfortable.’ He pauses. ‘And I didn’t make you mad?’

‘No.’

‘Huh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m… I don’t mind that you know who I am out of the suit. I think it would be cool if we could be like… If we could hang out without our suits on sometimes, you know, and talk about Wade and Peter stuff instead of Deadpool and Spider-Man stuff. But I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t want to give me any more chances. I really screwed everything up last time. I just… I’m supposed to protect my identity no matter what. I couldn’t just give up on doing that to get laid a few times before you moved on.’

‘Why would I move on?’

‘I don’t know. That’s how the Sex Friends thing works, right? Just every now and again, see you when I see you?’

‘For a lot of my friends, yeah. Doesn’t mean it’s always like that. I just don’t have anyone who's around that often. Except you.’

‘Except me.’ There’s a silence. ‘So, you were trying to give me space because you thought I was uncomfortable? And I was trying to give you space because I thought I’d made you mad at me?’

‘And you’re not uncomfortable and I’m not mad, I think we went over this.’

Peter smiles. ‘Do you want to return these purses with me and then go watch cartoons at yours?’

They walk around until they have tracked down all four ladies looking for their purse. Deadpool insists on putting a couple of extra twenties into each one before they hand it back because it makes Peter smile and after, Peter slings them home and they curl up on the couch together.

They fall asleep in Wade’s bed, stripped out of their suits, both wearing Wade’s clothes instead.

It’s weird to wake up in the morning, without the masks on and everything, and not have sex, and so they fuck, Wade pressing Peter’s face into the pillows and counting out how long he has to stay there before Wade lets him up again. His Spider-Babe loves breathplay and comes hard and desperate just from Wade’s gentle thrusts. By that time, Wade is only barely starting to work up towards his own orgasm and so he keeps going, turning Peter over onto his back so that he can see his dopey smile, the way he moans and arches his back all sexy just for Wade’s benefit while Wade fucks another orgasm out of (and into) him.

It’s a Saturday, so they can just spend the morning lazing in bed and Wade decides that even though he doesn’t play favourites, Peter is his Best Sex Friend.


End file.
